It wasn't that he was moved by the fact that it was a child. He had two of his own, somewhere in the world. Fee would be about her age, if Fee were still alive.
And it wasn't that he felt the need to help her. In Grandbell there was no shortage of the needy and the wounded, many whose survival would be more certain.
He wrapped her bloodied form in his scarf and snuck her from Barharan ground for the only reason he did anything anymore.
By the river, he cleaned the blood from her face and hair. She was pale and cold, but flinched when the water touched her skin – a good sign. Her blood had soaked through his scarf and stained his sleeves, but her bleeding had stopped. If her wounds did not fester (and wounds from dark magic often did) she would survive.
In the stream, he washed his bloodied shirt. He hung it across a branch in the sun to dry. Watching the girl breathe, he wondered how in the world he was meant to look after her. He'd been living as a bard, wandering the world with the vague sense that he was supposed to be at certain places at certain times, and all the details in between didn't matter. He was done with Barhara once he found her, and now it was time for Levin to make sense of his meandering life.
Silesia might do, he thought. He knew an empty village where he could raise her quietly. They could hide for a week, a month, a year – until something called him away again.
He watched the girl breathe. Silesia, then. If she lived.
He swathed her in cloth until her blood did not show, and paid for a night at an inn. She pulled through the night and the next day, through whispers in the most lawless places, he managed to acquire a staff. He healed her at once.
That evening, for the first time, she stirred and opened her eyes. He noticed but said nothing; she kept watching, wide violet eyes just looking at him, without expectation, without fear.
He softened a lump of old bread in a mixture of water and medicine. The girl was very quiet for a child; he hadn't expected to be the first to speak. "Eat," he said, putting the bread in her open hand and busying himself with arranging their things for the trip. When he looked back at her, she was still staring at him, "Eat it," he said again.
The medicine leaked from the bread and dripped between her fingers and onto the blanket. Impatiently, he took the bread and tore it into pieces, pinched her nose shut until, squirming, she opened her mouth. When he stuck bread in her mouth, with a teary look she complied, chewed, and swallowed.
Fury would've been mad about the way he forced her, but he had grown numb to shame.
"Don't make me feed you the rest," he told her, and gave her the bread. Her eyes fixed on him, she reluctantly ate another piece of the bitter bread.
He had healed her wound, but the blood she'd lost was gone. Even if she could not march, he felt it urgent to leave Barhara. By the window he pricked his fingers with a sewing needle trying to fashion a sling.
The room's only other occupant watched him.
"What's your name?" he asked her. She gave no response, even though he knew she understood. "Your name?" She only stared, as before. The cloth slipped, he stabbed his finger with the needle, and cursing he returned his attention to the sling.
In truth he didn't mind her silence. These days conversations were work, more often than not. And he supposed, in a fashion, that her silence was proof she shared a kinship with him deeper than his offspring could understand. Fury had always looked to their safety.
This girl had taken a dark magic spell meant to kill. Whether her life before had been sweet or bitter, she was with him now in a seedy inn with a gnarled scar down her side. It reminded him of rising from a mess of armor and burnt limbs, choking on ash but no tears as he obeyed the aura from his tome, the god in his blood, to serve fate's purposes absolutely.
They'd both risen to a new life in Barhara. He unfurled the finished sling. "We're leaving," he told her.
The girl was asleep on his back when he spotted the border town. He'd traveled for so long, lived elsewhere for so long and returned to a country so changed, that reaching Silesia no longer felt like homecoming.
He thought about making detour on the way to the village. Fury and the children probably still lived in the capitol, in his childhood home. At least, they had, when he saw them last.
At first he had been surprised to see Fury alive. But not too surprised – Fury had always been strong. She descended upon him from the sky one night and hadn't even bothered to tie her pegasus before leaping at him, tearstricken.
"I thought you were dead."
Maybe he had been. Maybe he was.
"Come with me. Our children are safe. I'm so happy to see you again."
He rode double with her. She told him about the year between the battle and the present, the survivors she'd seen that made her wonder if he too was among them. After awhile she kept asking, "Are you all right, Levin?" and he would mumble, "Yeah, I'm fine."
He brought them back to Silesia. He stayed with her for three years, more than he'd planned, helped Fee read and taught Sety his birthright, basked in the sound of their happy laughter, and then when they needed him most, when the Empire came, he felt Isaac calling him and he was gone.
He wouldn't go see them. Something told him that he should keep the girl far away from the palace. He was fine with that decision made for him – he didn't want to explain why he had to leave.
The girl, half-asleep, nestled her cold nose against his neck.
In Silesia, winter always came early. He managed to reach shelter before the snowstorm came: the ruins of a village, a house still charred from what looked to be a bandit attack from years past. The smell and the burn scars on the walls made him uneasy.
The girl sat before a crack in the wall, gazing outside intently. Levin wondered if it ever snowed in Barhara. In any event, he could feel a biting draft even from where he was sitting, against the opposite wall. "You're going to catch a cold," he said. She glanced at him and reluctantly scooted along the wall away from the crack. She wrapped her arms around her legs, rested her chin on her knees, and gazed at the floor.
Levin thought she might be making a display to spite him. He ignored it.
With little else to occupy him, he pondered the girl. He needed to keep her alive: he was sure of that much. As for the rest, why she was needed, who she was – Holsety remained impassive.
"What's your name?" he tried again.
She watched him from underneath her wispy silver hair. Forget it, he thought. Maybe her injuries left her dumb.
"Julia."
He barely heard her over the wind, her voice a small murmur. "Julia," he repeated. "There's a start." Julia remained huddled by the wall. "How old are you?"
She didn't respond.
"Come on, I know you can talk," he cajoled.
The wind whistled. Julia pressed her legs closer to her body. At last, she murmured, "I don't know."
"That so?" Levin supposed that happened now and then – Dew hadn't known his age either. "Hm. Who did you grow up with?"
"I don't know," she insisted.
He fell into silence, realization dawning on him. He looked at her, shivering against the far wall. They would be living with each other for awhile, at least. He no longer felt like ignoring her. "Come here," he said, removing his cloak. "It's cold."
At first she seemed wary, but a gust of wind changed her mind. She crawled across the floor like a younger child until he could wrap her in his cloak and press her next to him.
After some time had passed, she asked, "What's your name?"
For a moment he thought about doing away with everything he was with a single act. He'd already abandoned so much. But in the end, he said, "Levin."
They spoke from then on. When they reached the deserted town he had in mind, he told her a bard's tale about a spirit, who got lost and haunted the wrong house for a year before realizing his mistake. She only smiled.
She was unlike any child he had known. When he thought of Fee or Sety, the first thing he remembered was the sound of their mischievous giggling. Always their giggling – where did you put my book? – their gasps, their heads ducking back around a corner, and then giggling again. Always their laughter.
Julia behaved herself, left his things alone, and never laughed.
It wasn't that he preferred it any other way. He liked it quiet in the house. She was easy to look after. Still, on those rare occasions when she'd nestle up to him, he thought it was all wrong that she would be even a bit like him at her age – or that anyone, even himself, had fallen to the depths he had. That human fates could be destined to be so bleak.
He hoped they were all right, that his blood children still laughed. He set Julia on his lap and watched the fireplace flicker.